With the season 9 changes, quick melee damage was increased from 30 to 40. Close-range and highly mobile heroes (mostly Dive, which is very strong right now) treat their quick melee like a part of their kit they use to chip people down or confirm kills. Long or mid-range heroes hardly get any use out of melee because they can’t easily play in range to use it. Reducing it back to 30 damage smooths out some of the burst combos in the game.
Here are some examples of how characters with extreme mobility can use quick melee to bypass some kill breakpoints (I excluded critical damage from these calculations as those change breakpoints anyway) (I also double checked the damage numbers but feel free to let me know if my math is wrong lol):
Tracer:
240 damage clip + 40 damage melee kills Sym and Cass at 275 hp. With 30 melee damage, Tracer leaves them low enough to finish off but it requires her to reload or melee twice.
Win(s)ton:
50 damage leap + 40 damage melee + 70 damage primary is a quick burst of 160 damage in the span of a second. With 30 melee, he only deals 150 burst damage increasing his time to kill for 225 hp heroes to a little over 2 seconds and 250hp heroes at about 2.5 seconds.
D.Va:
153 damage Micro missiles + 25 damage booster, + 40 damage melee is a burst of a whopping 218 damage. Reducing this down to 208 at least requires more follow-up from D.Va and punishes her more for missing her missiles. It also means she can’t melee twice to confirm a kill on 250 hp heroes.
Genji:
81 damage fan + 50 damage swift strike + 40 damage melee is a burst of 171 damage, requiring only one more fan to finish off both 225 and 250 hp heroes. If it was reduced back to 30, it would require another shuriken or melee to finish off a 250hp hero. Not that Genji is like “good” or meta right now but this combo does impact him since he is hypermobile.
Sombra:
70 hacked virus + 70 virus dot + 40 damage melee is a 180 damage. Sombra can easily shoot one bullet, melee again, and translocate away where the target dies. Reducing melee damage requires more follow-up from her to confirm a kill. Sombra is also “not good” right now, but this is something that contributes to her feeling difficult to play against because she can very easily abuse melee damage compared to other heroes.
Lucio:
88 primary damage + 40 melee + 45 soundwave damage is a burst of 173 damage. Lucio is somewhat of a backline assassin now even with his reduced health. This combo lets him pretty comfortable duel even 250 hp dps with his added mobility and increased damage. Reducing melee back to 30 nearly removes the 250 hp breakpoint; the combo reaches 251 damage. He either lands all of his shots or has to follow-up with another shot or melee to get a kill, increasing the risk he has to take to take fights. Again, not that Lucio is meta or anything right now but this change does influence his current breakpoints as well.
The melee change really does seem to have just flown under the radar. These are just some examples of how the melee buff really does influence hypermobile characters and add to how “bursty” their damage can feel. Quick melee should be a way to finish off a low-health target in range when you need to reload. Having it deal more damage effectively gives heroes that rely on the melee combo an extra ability to burst people down.
6 Likes
Problem is if you nerf it you can’t headshot melee a Tracer on quite a few heroes
I’d rather they nerf the heroes damage individually instead of the melee
5 Likes
I suppose but those are fairly niche interactions with one hero versus all the other hero damage it impacts. It makes more sense to reduce melee for everyone rather than nerf other damage for a handful of heroes that can abuse it. That would just make them more reliant on melee damage to make up the difference. Melee hitboxes are already really generous.
Thats literally the purpose of it
6 Likes
On that point alone it’s enough of a reason not to make the change.
They completely broke tracers balance state when they gave her more HP. Bascially only hanzo and widow can oneshot her now when she was balanced around being a glass cannon.
Removing one of the only somewhat reliable combos left available to kill a tracer is not a good idea.
She honestly deserves further nerfs, this extra HP is always going to be a problem, yet we all know they’re never going to nerf her again.
2 Likes
This is what I was gonna say.
OP is suggesting that they nerf it so that it doesn’t do this, but the reason they buffed it is so that it DOES.
3 Likes
They’ve already watered the game down enough.
This is only acceptable if they reduce everybody’s HP.
250 down to 225.
275 down to 250.
300 down to 275.
Then reduce projectile sizes to something between pre-S9 and S9+, if not all the way down to pre-S9 levels.
its already been nerfed to 5.5 which means if you’re not hitting headshots, and engaging perfectly she is absolutely useless.
She’s still far and away #1 dps lol
It should be 5 more, not 10 more.
Thats reflective of her skill ceiling, doesnt mean shes overpowered at all.
They always have.
It literally does exactly what it always has, to basically the same effect it did before.
If you’re within 15~ % of your max health, it’s a finisher.
I actually agree. The melee buff benefited mobile heroes way more than the rest of the cast. Especially Tracer and Genji who have all the control in cqc engagements cause they speed diff you thanks to their hidden passive.
I.e. you move forward to melee them, they back up and you miss your melee cause they back up fast. Then they move forward and melee you cause you back up slower. So you really can only melee as a reaction against these characters.
Frankly Im fine with this for the sheer reason that it hopefully makes Blizzard understand season 9 was a disgusting braindead mistake.
I love this gradual patch after patch phenomenon of watching them walk back some of the atrocities S9 has brought us, like with Widow/Hanzo hitboxes, half the roster getting their health lowered back down, other heroes like Rat getting damages buffs to give them back some old break points (as if S9 never existed)
Its just so disgustingly obvious this is a failure, and instead of radically changing the entire game they shouldve just nerfed the disgusting 2 shot supports Illari and Kiriko that were even causing this damage spiking mess in the first place.
Go figure when you add in 2 more supports that can unconditionally 2 shot (unlike zen), have small support hitboxes (unlike zen), can heal themselves mid combat (unlike zen), and face no healing penalties for their damage (unlike zen), then FINALLY pair it all together by creating the DPS passive, making it stupid to bother healing when you could just shoot at the bad men magically the game becomes disgusting when 5 out of 5 members in a team either two shot or one shot everyone!
Game wouldnt be so trash if Blizzard didnt ruin the formula by turning every role into DPS.
its 45 quick melee damage not 40
No they didn’t. You’re just bad and can’t hit things even with the massive hitboxes they added in the same patch. Tracer doesn’t even have the smallest DPS hitbox, either.
Long and midrange heroes are hitscans and need nerfs as a general rule. Do you really want to have that conversation?
when did the make it 40 because i found the season 9 patch note where is says it went from 30 to 45 but couldnt find any note that said 45 to 40
its def 40 in game tho
It wasn’t nerfed iirc. It was 40 from S9 onwards.
The patch notes probably have a typo